From Maui to Manhattan, our capitalist engine has given rise to temples of stuff unrivaled by previous epochs, resulting in homes that often are shrines to the latest consumer goods.

Or, in the New York growl of comedian George Carlin: "A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it."

Stuff and more stuff

Just how much stuff do Americans really have? It's impossible to peek into every crammed closet and overstuffed garage, but some sense of our passion for possessions can be gleaned from the Gale Book of Averages:

2.4 TV sets in each U.S. household

5.6 radios per household

1.3 automobiles in households with less than $10,000 annual income

2.4 automobiles in households with greater than $75,000 annual income

142 catalogs flood each of our mailboxes annually

6.9 credit cards in each of our wallets

Ah, but what to do with that stuff? The question is emotional and timely. A sluggish economy has taken a bite out of the normally strong self-storage business, a common cure for the overstuffed house. At the same time, new companies specializing in professional stuff removal are going gangbusters.

Mix in a perennial New Year's resolution (the cousin to losing pounds is shedding stuff), a general frowning upon slovenliness (witness the popularity of The Container Store and its brethren) and a case of the inflated real estate market blues (every square foot is precious), and you have the makings of a ruthless junk-tossing season.

"People seem to be creating space for themselves," says Brian Scudamore, CEO of 1-800-Got Junk?, a Canadian company whose franchises have sprouted in more than two dozen U.S. cities in the past year. "We want order and neatness. So, when in doubt, folks throw it out."

If only it were that simple.

The Caven family of American Canyon, Calif., saw firsthand just how much they had accumulated when a photographer posed them in the front yard surrounded by the contents of their home a couple of years ago. But as much as Regan Caven wants to de-clutter, she is resigned to her reality.

"They say marriage is a compromise, and mine is living with my husband's stuff," she says. "His library is in our garage, instead of my car."

Just outside San Francisco, Trish Gump has had better luck. Two young men with Got Junk? T-shirts have arrived at her Mill Valley home to remove a hodgepodge of items that includes old stereo equipment.

"My husband is sentimental. It was the stereo he had in college, and it doesn't even work," she says as her junk swiftly disappears along with her $144 payment. "We wanted to buy a bigger house but couldn't afford it. So the stuff just had to go."

This yin and yang of stuff is more common than you might think. Architect Sarah Susanka notes that in most homes, "one person is ready to throw it all out and the other is the holder. It's a battle, because when I come into a house to plan a remodel, often the first thing I'm really doing is asking people to clean. And by clean, I mean serious weeding."

Susanka's The Not So Big House, a 1998 book that has spawned three sequels, is an ode to the hit philosophy of Arts and Crafts movement founder William Morris: Only that which is known to be useful or beautiful should win a place in your home. The less elegant B-side is: If you haven't used it in a year, chuck it.

Susanka says a less-is-more attitude resonates in these post-dot-com times. "The late '90s saw a lot of wealth creation, which led to a lot of acquisition. So people were working more and buying big houses and filling them, and yet they weren't satisfied," she says. "The stuff didn't fill the void."

But what does seem satisfying is getting rid of things simply to make room for new things. Which brings up an interesting question: Are we defined by our stuff?

Undoubtedly, walking into someone's home and noticing what's on the walls and the floors is a way to form a snapshot opinion. Most of us are proud of our things in the way they tell a story of our lives (a mask from an African safari here, a painting bought on a honeymoon there).

One man who famously got rid of all his possessions via eBay claims to have found the secret of shedding. "Most things remind us of past stories or experiences," says John Freyer, author of All My Life for Sale, which chronicles his visits to the purchasers of his stuff. "So if you can really connect with that experience in your heart, then you don't need the thing."

Traditionally, most folks who decide they are ready to part with some things don't skip straight to that Zen state of stufflessness. There is an interim level of consciousness in which you embrace the storage locker.

There are an estimated 40,000 storage facilities in the USA, 15% of which are owned by giants such as Public Storage and the rest by small operators. Experts estimate as many as one-fifth of Americans have things in storage. But some in the industry say this business is taking its first significant hit ever.

"Death, divorce, bankruptcy — I'd say most of the reasons you go to a storage facility are not good ones, but that's when you need them," quips Hardy Good, the Phoenix-based publisher of the industry's Mini-Storage Messenger. "But the overall downturn over the past year is unprecedented. My guess is people are tightening their belts and eliminating that monthly storage charge."

Couldn't it also be a desire for a less-cluttered life, a sign that the so-called simplicity movement is taking root?

"I'm not aware of any such movement. In fact, the only way I know to simplify my life is to either join a monastery or die," says Harvey Lenkin, chief operating officer of Public Storage. Though his company's business dipped roughly 7% in 2002, he isn't worried, noting that our general indecision about what to do with our stuff will keep him in business indefinitely.

"My mother passed away recently, and of course I put her things in storage," Lenkin says. "It'll stay there until either my cousins or the Salvation Army comes."

Indeed, people coming to help with your stuff, whether to store it or dump it, is a trend of seemingly unstoppable proportions.

Besides Got Junk?'s foray into the USA, another Vancouver, British Columbia, company (apparently this Canadian city is on the cutting edge of trash collection and recycling) called TrashBusters has opened offices in hubs such as Denver, Oakland and Washington.

"I sense pent-up demand the moment we open up in a new city," says TrashBusters CEO Mike McKee. "We're branding the junk business. Before, it used to be shady guys in their pickups. Now, it's uniformed, clean-cut guys. People seem to like that."

And for those who don't want to haul their stuff to a storage locker, there is Door to Door Storage, a Seattle company that delivers entire storage vaults to customers and then whisks their things away. It has opened offices in 17 cities in the past few months alone.

"Our success is easy to explain," company founder Tim Riley says. "Boomers are becoming empty-nesters, and often they're downsizing their homes. At the same time, the 'echo boom' generation is highly mobile. Storage for both is a natural. Whether it's good stuff or bad, we want the stuff around."

All of which depresses photographer Peter Menzel, who nonetheless used the world's fascination with its stuff to great effect in his 1994 photo book, Material World: A Global Family Portrait. In Menzel's book, Third World families stand proudly in their empty front yards, with only a TV or a teakettle, while emirs in Kuwait are barely visible amid a sea of possessions.

"Here in the States, it's just mind-boggling how much stuff we have, and I suppose my wife and I are as guilty as anybody," says the Napa, Calif.-based photographer. "But capitalism is based on buying more. What did the president ask us to do after Sept. 11? To shop."

So the great stuff debate continues. You can store it, though there is evidence fewer of us are taking this route. You can junk it; there is evidence more of us are warming to this purge solution to our bingeing sprees.

And maybe there's yet another solution. You can hide it. Just ask John Freyer, who so boldly got rid of all his stuff. He has a secret.

"I still have stuff in other people's basements," he says, just a little sheepishly. "But my fiancée won't let it back in the house."